06 April 2009

Brain has wisdom .... or ?

Studying education at the university was about understanding the cognitive process and behaviors ....
a good goal was a lesson with (hopefully) multiple metacognitive opportunities built into it by the teacher.

Today, the news is saying that the brain alone - by design - is the source of wisdom.

It details that certain parts of the brain are used for moral dilemmas and other parts are used for rational thought and primitive emotions.

I left this reading being confused.... this seems like another attempt to cut and dice something without taking into account the "whole" picture.

.... no doubt, fairly soon there will be a study saying why some people have better connections to one part of the brain or another .... then we can classify the smarter folks by the conditions that make one connection better than the other .... you see where I'm going?

I'm a whole kinda guy.

The whole person has to be considered when talking about education. Not just the brain.
Heck, I know a lot of smart people that can't teach what they know - how smart is that?

Fitting "wisdom" into a system of connections in the brain makes about as much sense to me as saying that every green XYZ car will get 20 MPG. Well that ain't so becuase you have to consider the traffic being driven in, the condiditon of engine, weight in the car and so forth .... you get the idea.

There are a lot of smart education efforts out there .... they focus on educating the "whole" person.

Kudos to you and don't let this news stuff get ya down.

You can read the article here http://www.educationreporting.com/viewArticleDetails.php?id=602

Happy Monday, Jack

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http://www.educationreporting.com/edtools/lisitng-posters.htm

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